Should I invest time in the warrior or level up a city bot?

Edit: I meant coth bot not city bot. Tried to edit the subject, but couldn't. Sorry for the incorrect subject.

Question for you vets?

So i am a returning player. 2 months ago I was level 95 as I haven't played for years. Now I am back and playing.

My warrior is now eok tier 1 geared and level 108 5200ac 180k hps. When grouping I have noticed that it is easier to let the mage pets tank instead of the warrior.

Should I just level up a coth bot on that account to become the main tank? Or will it be worth it in the end to keep the warrior and level her up?

If I level the mage up all I'll need is pet AAs and an earring is what I am thinking.

I think it depends on your play style and what your personal goals are. Everybody's preferences are different and I don't think you'll get an answer here that is properly tailored to you and what you're trying to get out of your play time.

One thing I've heard a lot from tanks is, they're very gear dependent, and it takes a lot of time to farm that gear. If your playtime will be more casual (1-2 hours a day, or less), you may want to go with the mage.

Also, in honor of your thread title

Tanks are very gear dependent but it is always better to go with the tank.
There are some things that a real tank can do that a pet can't.

Good responses already. You haven't provided near enough information for anyone to answer this accurately except for you. Does "worth it in the end" mean you plan to play a lot, raid current content on your main, and become as capable as possible in all aspects of the game? Go warrior then. Or just log in 2 hours per month and casually kill some junk? Stick with the mage. Lots of variables.

Ive played a beastlord as my main for a long time, our pet can tank almost anything one on one with enough AAs. The problem is the Nameds that spawn adds that are unmezzable or gimmicky., Im looking at you master something whatshisname in argin hiz. Youll need a real tank for those, if youre cool calling in a tanks help on those occasions though, you can do just about everything else with a pet.

If your warrior which looks like it has OK (not great, but ok) gear for those stats is worse than the pet you're doing something wrong on the warrior.

The pet is probably easier, in alot of ways fire and forget. You need to push buttons on the warrior but the warrior will far surpass the pet once you get those buttons down (and gear it some).

I'm a warrior so I'm biased, but if you're willing to put in the effort to make the warrior your "main" I think you'll be pretty happy.
If you aren't willing to put in the effort to do that, a poorly played tank is worse than a pet for tanking.

Agreed.. Wars are far superior to pets tanking. But again we have weaknesses they dont. And they have weaknesses we dont. And least for now we do not have an auto agro i win button.

I'm a pretty casual gamer and 3-box (sometimes 4-box). Effort-wise it is much easier to let the mage pet tank, and the mage pet survived with less attention than my PAL main at the beginning of this expansion (when PAL was still mostly in TBM gear).

That said, the attention given to a tank pays off in being able to handle bigger prey. At 110, and in RoS group gear now the PAL can tank nameds in Tier 1 confidently. And the disciplines let the PAL survive the inrush of a few adds while the ENC bot sorts them out. The Mage pet is great for singles, but when anything goes wrong the real tank is a real help.

Leveling a Warrior now but started Heroic. I PLVLed it to like 95 and started Progression starting at Shards Landing for Trophies and the later AA rewards and farming AUGs as I go. With Conflagrant Gear your gear issues should be somewhat minimized not to mention having a chance at EOK Rares. Rares you should definitely look for are Shield and MAYBE the warrior weapon. But after playing a raid main rogue tanking everything progression wise up until EOK, ROS showed me that it was time for a real tank. Sad state of affairs but now I am having a little fun redoing progression and gearing the warrior up.

Only way I can see you have a chance without a real tank is if you combine the mage with an enchanter. Go for the war

As a magician main since 2000, I always laugh when I hear tanks say that magician pets tank better than them. And I always shake my head in sadness when I invite a tank to group with me and they say they want the pet to tank instead of them.

First off, player tanks are better than pet tanks. Period. End of convo.

Second off, a pet tank can handle one mob just fine in most normal situations. Two mobs it becomes dicey. Three mobs and the pet owner will need to consider gating. And then you have tanks whom I have seen tank at least six mobs in ROS at once. Yes six mobs is a dicey situation, but six mobs is significantly better than a dicey two mob.

Third off, my advice is to invest in the warrior. Because you will get more satisfaction and enjoyment in the months and years to come in seeing your character improve and get better. I am not sure if you will find that same happiness in looting a pet earring...

Another city-themed song in honor of the title:

EM18 focused Mage water pets are *clearly* superior to Warriors in every way. (but please don’t nerf pets!)

More importantly, my favorite place for lunch!

At 108 with EoK T1 gear, a warrior should already be impressing you with his combination of tanking abilities. If you are not impressed, it may be that you need to invest more time in researching and setting up your macros and hotbars to efficiently box the warrior. Setting up some GINA timers to keep track of the 10min buffs that a warrior keeps up fulltime makes it easy. I am boxing a War/Enc/Shm team at 110 in RoS group gear, and the warrior feels rock solid and quite easy to handle in a boxing setup.

I three boxed for several years through CoTF using a mage tank group, then leveled up a Heroic Warrior to tank the later expansions. I was always leery of having to control a melee character while boxing, but really it is way easier and more relaxing than trying to stay on top of what the mage pet is doing.

There are a few choice situations where the Tank would enable you to do/tank things you could not with the Mage tank... But this is at the cost of a LOT of DPS that you lose using a warrior, since the Mage is both an OK Tank but also substantial DPS, in regular group grinding content A Mage paired with another DPS class, will plow through mobs at a respectable pace... Your warrior/ anything will be slow as death at killing stuff, and with the 8 minute repop times of modern zones that can make holding down a dungeon camp pretty onerous.

Make 2 mages, you'll never look back

And when you want to add a third character... Wait for it... ANOTHER mage!

Source: The completely unbiased opinion of a Mage.

You need a player character plate tank if you're planning on doing end-EoK or RoS content. Full stop. An AI tank will not suffice in some of the situations you *will* find yourself in. I have seen beastlords molo nameds in Gorowyn, but they also had very good gear and actually got a couple of out of group heals that helped them make it through the fight. Mages are still strong, but they're absolutely not as strong as they were in VoA-RoF period. Ignore the ignorant mages like the poster above me who think a mage pet can provide anything close to situationally based, intelligent mitigation as a player tank.

Source: a ranger who rolled a shadowknight when it was obvious merc tanking wasn't going to cut it in EoK.

At level 105 in EoK, I would sometimes use my 105 mage with the Enc/War. In that three box, the War dual wielding (middle of the road stance) easily out dps'ed the Mage in routine killing of trash. Part of that is the higher time of engagement when the War is pulling, and it takes a bit to get the mage dps going, but still. Now I was surprised at this, and I am sure a more intently played mage should out dps a warrior. But I am saying for a relaxed three boxing team not engaged in a burn on the named, I bet you would find the War doing more dps than the mage. They are really strong these days.

Lol.

Show me a parse.

Then I'll show you mine.

Go play WoW, buy new expansion, get free 110 character, you'll have less heartache than playing here seeing the direction this game is headed sadly.